


“i did the dishes.”

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [67]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Best Friends, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Sibling Love, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-19 06:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22806790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: In an effort to work out how to notice if she has truly fallen in love, Daisy asks everybody what their experience with falling in love was, and when they found out.Canon EraWritten for the sixty-seventh prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady & George Mukherjee, Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee, Bertie Wells & Daisy Wells, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong, Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [67]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	“i did the dishes.”

There is no miraculous moment.

That realisation irritates me: I have been waiting since I was thirteen to be struck by the sudden and overwhelming tidal-wave of emotion which lets me know that I am in love. However, it does not seem to happen that way. 

Each person I have spoken to has a different story of when they realised that they were in love.

* * *

Bertie says it feels like biting into a cake.

It was Christmas Day in Cambridge. The snow was falling outside — “A white Christmas!” Hazel had cried earlier, the only coherent sentence she had said between making moony eyes at Alexander — and we were in Bertie’s rooms, celebrating the evening away. By _we_ , I mean a party that consisted of myself, Hazel, the Junior Pinkertons, my brother, and Harold Mukherjee. Amanda Price and Alfred Chang had been with us earlier on but had left to attend other (larger) Christmas parties across Cambridge. Not that it bothered me: I was rather pleased with our little patchwork group.

“Bertie?”

“Yes, Squashy?”

In Bertie’s rather _nice_ rooms, we divided into groups. Alexander and George were poring over the unsolved mysteries book that George and I had been solving earlier that day, picking apart the psyche of the Jack the Ripper and dissecting the murder of William Desmond Taylor. Despite how stingily irritating Alexander was back then — _why_ did he persist with mooning over me when _Hazel_ was right there? — he and George fitted together well. Even more so now. Hazel and I were discussing H.H. Holmes over hot chocolate while crammed into one armchair, and Harold and Bertie were— _well_.

They were sitting beside each other on the sofa, startlingly awkward because of the presence of George and I, and Harold was drooping against Bertie, almost entirely asleep. 

“Nothing.”

“No, go on.”

We stared in a standoff for a moment until Hazel burst into the conversation, saying, “Daisy wants to know what being in love feels like, and I want to know when you realised that you were in love.”

Bless Hazel. I would never tell her but her presence is a regular marvel in my life.

With a startled blink, Bertie said, “When— when I realised?”

“Yes,” I said, not understanding why my brother was dodging the question with the same franticness that Hazel and I used to dodge adults and their instructions.

“When I realised?” he repeated, before jostling Harold a little to ensure that he was asleep. “You see… I’ve yet to tell him that I do.”

_I’ve yet to tell him that I do._

I felt a sort of shake take hold of my hands as I realised that my brother was in love with a _man_. I had known that before but the fact that he said it to my face suddenly made it _real_. What would our _parents_ say, and how would _Uncle Felix_ react? Despite my best internal struggles, I still cared about my parents and their opinions, and the idea of them rejecting my brother almost provoked the same instinctive reaction from me.

“You two are absolute…” George began then, shaking me from my thoughts. This forced me to look over at what action had provoked such a visceral shudder, and I saw Harold completely passed out on Bertie’s shoulder, and Bertie toying with his hair. Absently. Automatically. Naturally.

“When did you realise?”

“The night of the murder.”

Alexander shot him a book that so clearly read ‘what on _earth_?’ and luckily Bertie saved himself before that was at all vocalised. “When you boys decided to tackle the Old Library Chimney, Harold and I took one of the easier routes up, laughing the entire way and fooling about as you two cursed like hell and complained of scraped knees from the other side of the building. Harold was ahead of me, and he hauled me up by my hands over the lip and said, “Gotcha.” It was such an insignificant moment that I almost — and this sounds so ridiculous — thought that the realisation hadn’t happened. It just passed me by in a breeze, in a sort of sweet and momentary sensation, and it was gone. It was, instantly, normal.”

“Aww!” Hazel gasped, clasping her hands in front of her and swishing her long hair over one shoulder. “That’s _so_ sweet!”

“Shut up, Wong,” Bertie snapped, quite red in the face.

“Oh, and what does being in love _feel_ like?” she added, her long eyelashes fluttering as her romantic heart was wrapped in the idea of falling in love.

My own heart clenched in my chest, and I remember not white understanding why.

In the sharpest tone I have ever heard his voice take on, George said, “Wells.”

“Yes?”

“I’m giving you one chance with his heart.” He points to the sleeping Harold. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t.” Turning back to Hazel with a rather jarring look on his face, he said, “It feels like… it feels like when you’ve taken a bite out of a cake.”

Alexander and I snorted at the same time and then locked eyes in a giggling tandem that was the closest we had been since we met.

“Bear with me,” Bertie said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It… it feels like the sweet feeling that spreads through your mouth and the sort of bubbling and muffled laugh that you try to push down when someone makes you laugh while your mouth is full.”

“So it feels like… like a sugar rush?” George asked after a pause, and I am ashamed to admit that I missed the glance he cast to Alexander (but Hazel picked it up, ever emotionally observant).

“Almost. It feels like holding down a laugh.”

* * *

Uncle Felix says it feels like starting an assignment.

We had the conversation — one so open and odd for my family — when I was hideously ill during the Rue Theatre case. Hazel was off out on a mission to break and enter (for a noble cause) with George and Alexander, and I was feeling miserably sick in bed with my head heavy and my nose and throat feeling full and stuffed.

“I feel like _shit_.”

“Language, Daisy,” Uncle Felix scolded, sitting down on my bedside with a mug of honey and lemon tea. “It’s only a cold.”

“I _never_ get colds, Uncle Felix!” I complained, falling back on the pillows and letting my golden hair — Aunt Lucy brushed it for me earlier in the day, when I was too groggy to refuse — fan out over the cushion. The impact jostled Uncle Felix and the tea washed over the side of the cup, covering his hand.

“SHIT!” he yelled, hurrying to put it down and dry off his hand. “Daisy Wells!”

“Language, Uncle Felix,” I mumbled, feeling delirious with cold as my head swam with every movement.

“You watch your mouth, young lady, or I’ll have to wash it out with soap,” he scolded me teasingly, sitting back down beside me and putting a hand on my forehead. “You look like there’s something you want to ask me.”

“When did you realise you were in love?”

After a moment of blinking at me in shock, he burst out laughing. “Oh, _Daisy_ dear.”

“No, I want to know!” I protested, and the sincerity in my voice seemed to shock him.

“Alright, alright.” He reached over and smoothed down my hair. “Goodness, Daisy, you really are ill.”

In a childish way that I could later deny, I cuddled up against my uncle’s side. “Storytime, eh?” he chuckled. “I realised that I loved Lucy when we were issued a rather top-secret mission together, posing as aristocrats in Germany after the Orient Express affair. We had to _pose_ as a married couple, and it struck me rather suddenly the moment that I was dragged into the venue with Lucy laughing on my arm, posing as a soppy and in love wife.”

“Mmh… that’s so gross,” I mumbled into the crook of his arm, before continuing with, “What does being in love feel like?”

“It feels like when you begin an assignment — or, to use an example you would appreciate, a case.” His hand toyed with my hair and I made a mumbling noise, asking him to elaborate. “It’s the rush of something new beginning, a rush that changes and fluctuates but never really _ends_.”

“It feels like a crisis beginning?” I asked, unable to envision the beginning of a case as anything but Hazel panicking to high hell, and the disruption of my own routines and ways of conquering and taking my rightful place as queen of wherever Hazel and I are.

“It feels like the opening of a new chapter of an adventure.”

* * *

Aunt Lucy says that it feels like opening a gift.

Hazel and I asked her on an Exeat weekend when she came to Deepdean in September so we wouldn’t be alone on the weekend reserved for family.

“Aunt Lucy!” I cried, begging to show all of Deepdean that Daisy Wells — the image that Amina El Maghrabi caused to fall apart — was still there, emotional and girlish and unintelligent.

I flung myself at Aunt Lucy in her smart coat and sharp skirt, hearing Hazel behind me as she rocketed down the stairs of House and towards us.

“Hello, Daisy dear!” she replied, leaning down to kiss my temple in the way that aunts that are not her tend to do. “How are you?”

“Miss A—” I heard from behind me, followed by a muffled continuation. The two of us turned to see Kitty and Beanie gawking at the bottom of the stairs, Kitty with Hazel’s hand shoved over her mouth.

“Aunt Lucy,” Hazel said, shifting on her feet and smiling awkwardly over at me. “Can we go to the Willow Tea Rooms?”

“Of course, Hazel dear,” Aunt Lucy said, patting Hazel on the shoulder.

From our left, where Clementine was greeting _her_ parents, she turned and sneered, “Hazel, she isn’t _your_ aunt.”

“Of course she is!” I replied, feeling a swell of protection towards Hazel and the way she brought her hand up to touch the noticeably different Epicanthic fold of her eye. “Family doesn’t have to be blood, Clementine. Not that you would notice with your lack of friends.”

I got detention (for that comment) alongside Clementine (who slapped me) but it was worth it to see the sparkle in Hazel’s eyes when I said it (which made something ignite in my chest that felt like a cool flame).

* * *

“When did you realise that you were in love, Aunt Lucy?” I asked over the coffee that she allowed Hazel and me to have.

“Are we having a women’s chat, then, girls?” she asked with humour in her voice as she took a sip of her Earl Grey. “I’m teasing, I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

“I think that she’s fishing for information so that she can tell when she falls in love with George,” Hazel said with an utterly straight face.

With the stoniest glare I could muster fixed on her, I kicked her as hard as I could in the shin.

“Daisy!” she yelped, though Aunt Lucy didn’t notice as she was staring off into the distance with a spacey look on her face.

“Aw,” Hazel whispered.

“Gross,” I muttered.

“I realised when we began a case that we were assigned after my assignment on the Orient Express. We had to pose as a married couple, and the moment before we walked into the venue, he offered me his arm and jokingly called me ‘Mrs Mountfitchet’,” she explained with her face settled in a calm and peaceful expression that I could only describe as ‘placid’.

It could not suit her face any less. 

Hazel, however, was _enraptured_ by the idea of love, and my stomach stung with the idea of Alexander Arcady.

It had to be him that she was thinking of because it could not be anyone else.

To me, the only mystery was why I felt like _that_ upon thinking of Hazel being in love.

“And what does it _feel_ like, Aunt Lucy?” she asked, the words riding on a breath. “Being in love?”

“It feels like opening a gift,” she replied, looking down at us with sparkling eyes. “The thrill as you tear the paper and anticipate what’s going to be inside, and then what’s inside, even if it’s not amazing, can’t distract from the thrill of opening it.”

“It feels like receiving a present?” I asked, and Hazel looked at me with astonishment, wondering why on earth I was asking.

“What is with all this love?” she whispered into my ear. “You asked Bertie this last year.”

Astonished that Hazel could be onto me — _I’m trying to figure out whether or not I’m in love with_ you _, you imbecile!_ I thought — I barely managed to plaster on my indifferent voice before replying, “Oh, did I?”

Reaching out to squeeze my hand fondly, she replied, “It feels like the anticipation before an event.”

* * *

Lavinia says it feels like being on fire.

The two of us were standing pride of place in the Deepdean hall, watching as Prayers played out in unusually upbeat tones. It has always been upbeat since the murder when were in our Fourth Year, but I can’t say that I prefer it this way. I was standing in my position at the end of the row of prefects, and beside me was Hazel (my appointed head prefect because who else would it be?), then Lavinia, Amina, Kitty, and Beanie.

When the hymn came to an almighty crescendo, Lavinia let out an audible and cynical snort at one of the beautifully romantic lines. Hazel delivered retribution swiftly, with a smack to her shoulder and a whisper of, “Lavinia!”

When we left Prayers, everybody had somewhere to be except Lavinia and me. The two of us walked back to our room together, and I broke the silence with my question. “What do you think being in love feels like?”

With a snort, she said, “Why are you asking _me_?”

“Always good to get a cynic’s opinion, is it not?” I replied, putting on my best detective voice, an imitation of Uncle Felix. “Anyway, go ahead.”

“It’s… I suppose that I imagine it to be like being set on fire. An angry feeling, a feeling that burns and aches, and eventually… eventually, it burns you out.”

I turned to stare at Lavinia, at her eyes fixed hard on the middle distance. Her past, her parents, the divorce, the scandal, everything about her life has corrupted her view of love.

It’s difficult to not pity her.

“It feels like burning up?” I asked her softly, reaching over to lay a hand on her shoulder in the way that Hazel does to comfort me.

With a violent shrug to get my hand off, she replied, “No. It feels like burning _out_.”

* * *

Harold says it feels like winning a competition.

“Harold?”

He looked up from where he was sprawled out over the sofa, toying with the lapel of his army-issue peacoat.

“Yes, Detective Wells?” he asked in an amused tone. “What can I do for you?”

“God, the army has made you fucking fifty times more annoying,” I swore at him, before replying, “When did you realise that you were in love?”

His eyebrows raised so dramatically that I winced in sympathy. “Weird question to ask about your brother, Daisy. But if you insist… I realised when we were talking one night. It was a while into our second year at university, and Bertie jokingly asked me if I wanted to dance to the music playing from his record player. We ‘danced’ as well as we could as two stumbling nineteen-year-olds could, and the realisation sort of crept upon me throughout the song.”

“What song?”

“ _Cheek To Cheek_ ,” he replies ruefully, kicking his boots up onto the arm of the sofa. The Deepdean student inside me winces. “Anything else you want to know?”

This was said sarcastically, but I pounced on the opportunity. “Yes. What does it feel like to be in love?”

He gave me an astonished look but didn’t pass judgement. “It feels like winning a competition. The thrill and the high and the heightening of your senses as you clutch your prize. It’s thrilling, exhilarating, and it never gets boring.”

“It feels like… like stepping on a stage.”

“Almost, Wells.” He threw me a look, and I knew that he was seeing how much I look like my brother. “It feels like stepping _off_ one.”

* * *

Kitty says it feels like being in the middle of a dance.

The two of us were taking tea together between my missions into Germany and France. My break was two weeks and I spent thirteen of those days with Hazel, who is working out of a tiny office in Oxford University on decoding a thousand different Nazi communications. The final day was spent in Brighton, gathering the pieces I need for my new identity. Kitty happened to be on a beach holiday with her husband and her two dogs, and it was a prime opportunity to meet up.

“When did you realise that you were in love?”

She raised her eyebrow and took a sip of her tea, which tasted like it had been rationed. “ _Daisy Wells_ , did you just ask me what it’s like to be in love?”

“Perhaps.” _Damn_ Kitty and her knowledge, and how well she figures things out when I don’t want her too. “Well?”

She chuckled and set down her mug. “Are you trying to collect my love story so you can use it for your new identity?” With a chuckle, she said, “With all seriousness, I realised… during our first dance.”

I choked. “You married someone _before loving them_ ?” I could not _believe_ that when I heard it. What is _wrong_ with the people I know, with people that like men? How on earth could you marry someone you don’t like?

“No, no!” she said with a shriek in her laugh. “I loved him before but it properly struck me during our first dance, when I looked into his eyes and…” She sighed. “Lord, I love him.”

“You’d better, given all…” I nodded towards her stomach, where her hand was naturally settled. “That.”

Her eyes opened wide and she choked out a, “ _What_?”

With a gesture, I said, “You’re pregnant.”

“You _picked up on it_ ?” she asked with a gaping jaw. “ _How_?”

“I’m intelligent, Kitty,” I said, smiling around an absolutely awful rationed tea biscuit. “And, what does being in love feel like?”

A sort of confidence claimed her, and irritating sort of ache that was clearly her realising that, while I may have an insane amount of intelligence, _she_ has a husband.

“It feels like, I suppose, being in the middle of a dance. Like the thrill of being held and being loved and the thrill of knowing that it is _forever_ ,” she let out another happy noise, and then fixed me with a look. “How’s Hazel, by the way?”

I choked once again, and she grinned. Sometimes, I do dislike how little Kitty bows to my will nowadays. “She’s fine,” I said in a tight voice. “So… it feels like… like working through a routine?”

“No, you idiot.” I scowled at her and her smile grew wider, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “It feels like not giving any damns what somebody thinks of you.”

* * *

“Beanie?”

“Yes?” she asked, and I winced at the feeling of cat claws digging into my thigh.

“Oh, fuck.”

With a snort, she said, “Daisy!” and reached over to take her cat from my lap. “That’s _bad_ , Deepdean.”

“What do you think being in love feels like?” I asked, inclining my head towards her, curled up under a thick blanket in her favourite armchair with a mug of hot chocolate and Deepdean on her lap. My golden hair falls over the arm of the chair from how I’m sat, and I can see the nail polish chipping from my nails.

“I imagine…” she stroked her cat as she thought, looking rather like a villain from a film despite her unthreatening… well, her unthreatening _everything_ . “I imagine it feels like that moment in class… when you, when you _get_ it. The moment where everything _lights up_.”

“It feels like completing a piece of work?” I asked, and she smiled.

Her eyes were bright as she said, “Almost. It feels like understanding the work that you’re about to complete.”

* * *

George says that it feels like falling asleep after a case.

When he described it to me, we were in a dusty office in France in 1943, the shuddering shockwaves of the bomb that landed near us three hours ago still ricocheting around the inside of our skulls. There was a bottle of Coca-Cola between us on the cramped desk, and his foot was crossed over mine as our stockinged heels brushed the scratching and threadbare carpet.

“When did you realise that you were in love?”

Surprised dark eyes blinked at me in the light of a flickering gas lamp. “Really?”

“I’m curious.”

There was no judgment on his face because he _understands_ me. “Right.”

He continued after a contemplative pause. “We were fifteen. It was after the Case of the Missing Treasure: Alex and I were hauled back to my family home and had the sense kindly impressed back into our adrenaline-filled minds, and then we were sent up to my room to sleep. The moment the door closed, we looked at each other and burst out laughing. I remember seeing his eyes sparkling with mirth as we laughed together, and I was struck with an odd feeling that hit my torso like a sharp shock. This was accompanied by a thought, as casual as anything: ‘I could spend the rest of my life like this’.”

I could almost see the charm of Alexander Arcady.

 _Almost_.

“And what does _being_ in love feel like?”

The pause stretched on and on, pencils scratching and the fickle lighting trembling, casting spiralling shadows over our work, and the question seemed to have been forgotten entirely. 

“It feels like falling asleep after a case,” he told me, an entire five minutes after I asked. “It’s as if you’re relaxing for the first time in days. The blood is still pounding in your head, and you’re fizzing with adrenaline, and you think that you will never sleep again. But when you fall asleep, you’re content and everything is _right_ because you _made_ it right.”

“So it feels like contentment,” I replied, but we both knew it meant more than that.

Contentment cannot describe the feeling that people like us get when we know that our work has saved a small part of the world.

“It feels _right_.”

* * *

Alexander says that it feels like stepping onto dry land.

Both of us are seasoned travellers from our work during the war, while George and Hazel stuck more solidly to one base or another, leaving the spy work to those who are lucky enough to fit in.

“Alexander,” I asked him once, when we were on a boat on the way to France, “when did you realise that you were in love?”

It was a year after the war, 1946, and we were on our way to the French embassy to clean up the last of our agency’s fake identities and deliver an official apology for the administrative chaos that the higher-ups lazy corner-cutting caused.

We were leaning against the railing of the ship across the channel, my hair pinned up under my French _Dior_ hat, and my body warmed by a fashionable American coat and thick stockings, while Alexander looked almost irritatingly dapper in a sharply-tailored overcoat and a smart black trilby hat. 

“You, _Daisy Wells_ , are asking me the question of when I realised that I am in love with _a man_?”

“Do you want to be shot?” I asked him in blunt tones, wondering what on earth possessed me to bring up this topic with such an insufferable person. “Shut the _fuck_ up.”

He shot me a look. It wasn’t quite at the standards of George’s withering glare in those days, but it was on par with Harold Mukherjee’s cool stare of judgment. “Do you want an answer?”

“Yes,” I replied bitterly through gritted teeth.

“I realised when George received the letter calling him for the draft. He received the letter from our porter and opened it with that neat letter opener than you got him when he graduated. When he opened it, I saw the insignia in the corner and I knew what it was before he had finished reading it. Then he looked up at me and said, ‘I don’t want to go’. A week later, we received the letter from your Uncle Felix, exempting both of us from the draft due to us being required for government work towards the war. The moment I read it, the realisation struck me so hard that I was almost bowled off my feet. I thought that I realised at that moment, but I had realised the moment that George told me that he didn’t want to go. I just didn’t let myself feel the full weight of realising that I loved him with the horrifying potential of him being drafted hanging over our heads.”

I looked up at him — _up_ , I hate that I have to look up at him — and he was staring out at the French mainland as it appeared from the fog that gathers in the horizon. “You are _so_ in love,” I said in the most distasteful tone I could muster. 

“Hideous, isn’t it?” he replied with a rueful smile.

We drifted from the topic for a while longer, bouncing off each other in a strange tandem that I never thought I would be working in with _Alexander Arcady_. The conversations flew through all manner of things as we drifted closer to our destination: Lavinia's new cat, Harold’s new haircut that we were all pretending wasn’t utterly hideous, the fact that Uncle Felix is going grey, to the stray cat that Aunt Lucy wasn’t pretending not to the feeding despite the suspicious disappearances of their cold cuts of meat.

“Alexander?” I asked as the boat prepared to dock, and we dithered and the railing a moment longer, catching onto the tendrils of a conversation slipping through our fingers as the moment of nothing, floating between here and there, the blank expanse is blue France and England, came to a close.

“Yes?” The wind whipped onto the deck in a sudden gust and he shrieked, while I laughed and put a hand to my hat as Alexander chased his hat to the top of the stairs down into the hull of the boat.

“What does being in love feel like?”

His answer was instantaneous. “It feels like stepping onto dry land. Like taking a deep breath and feeling the swaying world suddenly steady under your feet.”

“It feels like being steadied.”

He nodded but made a face that signified that I was only half-correct. “It feels like being caught midway through a fall.”

* * *

When I step over the threshold of our London flat in the mid-Spring of 1947, Hazel greets me with a shout of, “Love! How was it?” and I hear footsteps rushing from the kitchen. She sweeps around the corner in a beautiful circle skirt with her hair loose around her shoulders, an enormous grin on her face that it is only fit for my presence to cause.

“It was good, Watson,” I reply, reaching out for her to pull her close and kiss her. “George was being an _idiot_.”

“How was _George_ being an idiot?” she asks, an incredulous look on her face.

A fair point: usually, he is incredibly intelligent. “Well, can you believe he suggested that we put _Alexander_ up as my fake husband? We need to be a British-sounding couple!”

She chuckles, and the sound rings in my ears like bells. “Okay, I contest that one, that is a daft idea. Oh, by the way, I did the dishes.”

As ordinary as anything, in the middle of a completely ordinary conversation, something snapped into place. A warmth spread through my chest and rose to my face, and I felt a smile break out on my face. “What are you smiling about, Daisy?” she asks with a laugh.

“I love you.”

They’re all wrong.

It feels like everything in your life is coming together, and I imagine that I am a supernova, exploding in the arms of Hazel Wong.


End file.
